Recent Tasting Notes

Nooooooo! I woke up with a sore throat and congestion this morning! UGHHHH.

This was the first thing I reached for. (Along with a Tylenol caplet, of course.) I swear it works. I love this echinacea blend best because you can steep it for however long you need to, and it never gets bitter. And Vitamin C is always a good thing when battling a cold.

Not looking forward to November this year. Something tells me it’s gonna be a doozy.

This is a delicious bagged green tea! The flavor is perfectly balanced, and you can leave the teabag in the water for as long as you want- it doesn’t get bitter. I’ve started drinking it because it’s cold and flu season, and I’ve heard good things about Echinacea’s positive effects on boosting the immune system. Be careful, though- if you take Echinacea too frequently, it will start to lose its effectiveness. Drink this tea ONLY whenever you feel a cold coming on, until you feel better! It’s delicious and it works!

My father-in-law heard me talking about my love for white tea, so while he was out food shopping, he brought back a box of this (can you tell my in-laws are awesome yet?!). I had it unsweetened as I had it during dinner (I feel it’s a waste to add sweetener when I’m eating something mildly sweet since you can’t really taste the sweetness that way – my sandwich had a juicy tomato on it)! I only steeped for just under 2 minutes and I waited till my water had cooled down to 175.

It’s mild, very smooth and with very little astringency. Pretty nice, but I’ve gotten awfully spoiled by the loose white teas in my collection. There’s just something about them! Not too bad though for tea on the fly.

Preparation

So I have a story to tell. One that’s had me chuckling ALL day! :P
It all started yesterday evening as I puttered around the house in a purging frenzy. So of course I needed some tea. While the tea steeped, I decided to keep busy. Every once in awhile, I like to reorganize my tea cupboards, as I am sure most of us here do… and since we are packing up the house I thought it would be prudent to do so again. Mum decided that she needed to clean out her stack of bagged teas as well so while I was organizing mine, I stacked hers on the other side of the counter. Before I go on, you should know that while I love her to bits, she has a rather low tea tolerance. I don’t mean consumption! more like… she rolls her eyes when I make a cuppa, is convinced that my tea habit is causing my health issues, and most of all, complains about the real estate my habit occupies.
Well, you can imagine my surprise when after organizing my stash in bins, it took up only slightly more space than her stack of boxes! ha!!!
Somehow, over the years, she has accumulated loads of tea! all bagged of course, and most of it isn’t even opened. Yep, it’s been sitting there for eons, as in long before I started my tea hobby. It’s kept in a different cupboard and being higher up, somehow we didn’t notice. No matter, its all good in MY book.
After getting over my gleeful shock, I called her in to demonstrate the negligible difference in our piles. “Oh dear” she said. Oh dear!?
And now, she is torn as to what should be done about it. One one hand, it’s old and likely stale but in the other palm, she doesn’t want to just toss it.
What to do?
well I know one thing… she will NEVER live this down. ever ever ever. Nope. Not gonna happen. ha!
Anyhow, I chose Salada to write this story under because she loves it. Even more than Red Rose, which surprised me as I had always thought she preferred the good ol’ RR. Not that I really have any idea what she’d rate this tea, but on her behalf… I give it an 80.
(my rating would be closer to 75 I think)does one last victory shimmy
(that said, she has no knowledge as to the size of my work or secret stash. Shhhh!)

lol oh gosh. This is so me. I’m not a bagged tea drinker by any means anymore, but I’ll admit it, I have some loose leaf tea that I’ve had for years stored in my cupboard and I have the hardest time throwing it away. I’ve tried some of it since and it definitely doesn’t taste the way it should… but something about throwing it out makes me sad… and I’ll admit it here for the first time… I have a secret stash also. I’ve got extra tins of tea hidden in my bedroom closet. I have a few teas that I have stockpiled and that’s where I hid the extras. :)

Gmathis: our secrets are safe here!!
TheKesser: yup. Funny thing to, I threw out some Bengal Spice tea bags because they were super old and had lost the flavour I loved… but somehow the box ended up in Mums pile again?!
Missy: I thought so to!
Geoffrey Normal: I shimmy all the time, not very well mind you :P

I used about half a tsp of sugar, what I normally use in Green Tea. This tea, for a pre-packaged bag, is actually fairly tasty. Not much work put in for a simple Green Tea. The color is a bit darker, the flavor (with sugar) is a good mix of umami and some bitters.

I was able to taste this tea at my office building. They select a few different teas to try for us, and this was one.

Preparation

I drank this as a child (8-12 years old) at camp and I think it assisted in a lifelong “caffeine” or perhaps “theine” is a better word. However it was bad tea! I have not had since the early 90’s. Worse than Lipton. Great little proverbs on the tea tags however.

This Salada tea is sporting a new package; promising for a simple & smooth Green Tea. Since it all starts with the tea leaf. Each tea leaf that goes into Salada 100% Green Tea is meticulously hand picked from the lush tea gardens of the far East and once brewed, Salada Green Tea produces a delicately smooth flavor and natural sweetness.

I use one tea bag in my cup and pour the hot water into my cup and leaving it to steep for few minutes. Tea’s color is golden and tea’s aroma is mildly vegetal. When I taste the tea it is not astringent but does have that leafy green taste to it. It taste and smells like cleanly cut green grass that one sees when passing by a house who may have mowed their lawns and some of the grassy residue from their machine is left to the side of the yard. It is a lovely smell making one think of a clear day with no haze, with just a slight breeze in the air wafting of the freshly cut grass.

I have been taking it easy and drinking this Salada tea as part of my daily life style, in that I want a simple cup of tea with not much fussing or reviewing.

I take one tea bag and with fresh water, allow this to boil and removing it from the heat and letting it cool for one minute. I then pour the water into my cup with the tea bag already in it and leave to steep for a few minutes.

After the allotted time, I take my tea and remove the tea bag from my cup and simply begin to drink it. It is mildly astringent, vegetal in the tasting; leafy like. Color is a golden liquor and smells slightly green in scent. One can tell straight away that this is a green tea. There is nothing hidden about this tea. It is a bowl of salad greens warmed slightly.

I remember sampling Salada Organic tea and did not like it; funny how our views changes with time perhaps depending on frame of mind.

Preparation

Sample number four dealt with. I can’t remember where this one came from, but I’ve had it for ages because… generic green tea in an ordinary bag. There’s something not super-tempting about that. But I suppose that’s exactly what this sort of week is for, isn’t it?

I hadn’t even bothered to look it up on Steepster and put it in my cupboard, it seems. Only reason I’m even posting about it, is because I found it when I looked it up to see if it would require removing from cupboard or not, and since it was here, it seemed silly not leave a little note on it.

If you have never had green tea before in your life and decide to try it for the first time, DON’T pick this one as your first attempt. This tastes nothing like real green tea. It’s slightly bitter and with a sort of generic flavour that isn’t really anything other than NOT black, if you get my meaning there. It tastes a bit minty which I suspect is aroma contamination and rather like paper which can only be bag contamination.

It’s not unbearably bad, it’s completely drinkable. It’s just not something that will be very recognisable as green tea if you don’t know that’s what you’re supposedly having.

Dad keeps this tea in the house, so I decided to try it. I heated the water up in a smaller tea cup, so I think I got the water too hot. I also decided to add honey to it. Five drops of liquified honey.

This doesn’t really have a taste to it. It is really smooth though. Not what I was hoping for in this cup.

Preparation

Now that I am back in school, I have to get used to water heating methods. At lunch, we have a hot water spicket that we get hot water out of and the temperature is normally too hot for green tea. So, I got some and waited about two minutes for the water to cool and then put my tea bag in for about three minutes.

I’m not sure if it is because I have been drinking a lot of blacks and herbals that my green tasted funny. I think I should have the water cooled a little longer. I will try that for next time.

I’ll have a hard time getting my temperature right with my new kettle too because I am not entirely used to it yet. But I want my green tea and I am determined to learn how to make a good cup here at school.

Preparation

I forgot that I really shouldn’t let this get cold when I am drinking it. At least, not on an empty stomach. I had a really rough morning with my brother and the animals so this is the only thing I can get down right now. Tea saves my sanity.

I have been drinking this fairly often because mom picked this box up for me the last time she went tea shopping. As a plain, hot cup it is pretty good. A little bland, but it is pretty good anyway. It mixes really well with other things.

Normally, I drink my green tea plain, but I have 40 bags to go through and there are only so many ways that you can drink a hot and plain cup without it getting boring. The Vanilla Silk does not overwhelm the cup. It makes it very creamy and gives it a hint of sweetness. Makes for a very nice after dinner cup.

Backlogging from the weekend. The hotel had this to offer when I asked for tea with breakfast. Now my wonderful grandmother swears by this tea. I swear not to drink it again unless I have no other choice. All the milk and all the sugar could not make me finish a cup of this. Very plain and boring to my taste.